Since November 2020, the aircraft of the German federal government have completed 431 flights on the route between Cologne/Bonn and Berlin alone. 80 percent of these were positioning flights, i.e. without passengers on board.
A parliamentary inquiry by the Left Party to the Ministry of Defense revealed that a whopping 431 of the 336 flight movements were pure ferry flights. Furthermore, it can be read that they were used for training purposes if possible, but this statement is not deepened any further.
In Germany, short-haul flights are repeatedly caught in the crossfire of criticism. In the middle of the corona crisis, the air traffic tax was changed so that domestic German and European short-haul flights are taxed more heavily. Last but not least, due to political pressure, Lufthansa switched the Nuremberg-Munich route to a bus connection.
The background to the many movements of the Bundeswehr's readiness to fly on the Cologne/Bonn-Berlin route is that Germany has ministries in both Berlin and Bonn. For normal employees there is the so-called "official shuttle". In the past, this was officially advertised, but the normal line service is now used. The many trips by officials between the two seats of government are a considerable source of income for the airlines.
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